Touching The Skies Of Jupiter
by klaxipro
Summary: As a child, everyone is melded into molds of what they will be, like hot wax and broken promises. Roxas couldn't cope and Sora was just a bystander. They both tried to reach up and paint the world with their wishes though. akuroku, soriku, others


_warnings_: heterosexuality, homosexuality, language, drugs, alternative universe.

**Touching the Skies of Jupiter**

(x)

"Momma." the hum of tires against asphalt. "Momma, hey, momma," skinned knees were hidden through pink band-aids. "Momma, where is daddy?" Brunette, thin-wristed and middle aged, the brunette woman sitting beside the blonde boy, clutched the steering wheel as if to block out her son. White-knuckles and red blood beneath the skin.

"Shut up Roxas." She spoke tersely and focused on the road, the practically empty highway. At being snapped at, Roxas turned to his brother beside him, the other boy curled up in a cotton blanket, dreaming about happy times and new toys. Simple and innocent and unawares to the fact that they were miles away from their old home, driving farther north and heading farther and farther from the shores of the islands. No more games of hide-and-go-seek with Tidus and Wakka, or giggle fits with Yuna. Nothing but new homes, new towns and unfamiliarity.

Roxas tucked his chin over his knees; let the thought sink in that he'd be enrolled in a new school for the upcoming year, the summertime pleasures already being stripped from the stress of friendless, antisocial awkwardness and the idea that the person sitting beside you hates you just a little, because you have a cooler lunchbox than them. Not that Roxas still brings a lunch; he's much too cool for that. Yup, yup. Nothing but prepaid checks from here on out.

Sora had a serene look on his face and probably would be able to fit in just fine, Roxas, on the other hand was unable to sleep, talk or barely breathe without his mother snarling from her post in the driver's seat of the smelly U-Haul. He had little hopes for himself and decided that, most simply, he'd be better off alone anyway. Like in those movies where an adventure happens. Roxas wanted to embark on an adventure, but that's just a secret.

Sniffling a bit, the blonde missed his bed and wished that they didn't have to sit on the uncomfortable, worn seating. "Momma?"

"_What_ Roxas?" She eased on the breaks as she made her way off the interstate and into a small in-between town.

"Do you still love us?"

Chuckling a little she smiled without looking over, her profile gentle like Sora's eyelids. "Of course, baby, now don't worry and just go to sleep, when you wake up, we'll be there." Nodding a little I recognized Cloud on his motorcycle in front of us, a beacon leading the way. Then my eyes drooped shut.

(**r**.)

Sometimes there are people who are horrible, horrible people out there.

There are people who just kick, push, shove and are so ridiculous in respect to others that the idea of a bone of niceness throughout the three hundred some is really, slim to none. And while children are young, mothers coddle and say bullshit like everyone has some niceness or how some people are just confused or how "No, that man is not kissing that other man. That isn't right, look away. Roxas! Roxas, honey, come on now." And then take the child's hand and force them down the canned goods aisle at the local grocery store. "Forget everything, honey."

Or even the ever favorite of my household: "do as I say not as I do". Blatant hypocrisy beside folded skirts and soft smiles, you can hardly see the maliciousness, just the stilettos and fake gold jewelry.

Way back, my momma used to garden and wear these ugly shorts that made her ass huge and sit in the dirt, the earth kissing her knees like how she'd kiss my dad; rough and unpleasantly. For awhile, I'd try to help her but then she'd just glare. She'd get all righteous and say that not only was it her time to be alone but on top of it, sweet little boys such as myself, were not supposed to garden. What the fuck kind of mother doesn't want their kids to be interested or curious about the world, curious about their parents? I sat on the cement steps until she gave up and shooed me away.

She forced toy fire trucks and G.I. Joes into my hands and told me to go play in the backyard, out of mind's eye. Like the social discrimination that boys were going to be teeming with masculinity and girls would still wear dresses; old-fashioned and highly ignorant. I grew up feeling really distant to my mother.

Dad was working in the garage, tinkering underneath the fender of a 1967 white Pontiac. It was his baby. Usually he'd enjoy himself, more so than being near my mother anyhow and just sat back, breathed in exhaust fumes and stare at pin-ups of playboy models; it was a horrible day, that day.

Since it was summer and they were both drawn into hobbies on the weekends, Sora and I were often times ignored or just sent elsewhere. Just long enough to not see the dysfunctional family. When I was that little, I couldn't pronounce dysfunctional, let alone know what the term meant when it'd fly across the house from my mom bustling in the kitchen to my dad who was ignoring her in the den. Even as a young kid I knew it was off.

I didn't have a firm grasp on it and even now I'm still trying to pick up the pieces of what love is. No one should be with and near someone they supposedly love and look so thoroughly pissed about it, I know that much to be true. Although I didn't fully understand the concept of rage and domestic disturbances in the first place I was just worried. Things were filling up slowly with worry usually, which is why the blades of grass that was tainted with plastic and Barbie dolls was like a sanctuary to just sit around and forget. Bleed, sit, forget. Not necessarily in that order.

Sitting down next to Sora, I was reminded so much that he was able to play with dolls and garden with mom while I was forced to wonder if it was fun or not.

Instead of continuing onward on that reverie, being the little _boy _that I was, I hit him really hard with the fire truck that she gave me and he chucked my G.I. Joe across the yard. From there he looked like he was going to cry and before long it just went into a huge brawl of tiny fists and spitting and tugging hair, pinching. The whole works.

I'd like to say that yes, at the young age of six and a half, I beat him. I'd love to sit around and brag that I kicked my older twin's butt and had rights over him for a week. Sadly enough for me, because he's the same age as myself, he had the same prospects and despite it needing to be the other way for sure, he beat me.

Sora used his heel to crush my nose into the grass and the caterpillars that came out during that period just after summer started and then like there was too much pressure, he. He just. He started bawling for hurting me and held my head in his lap, petting my hair and making sure that I knew that if I told mom, he'd do it again.

"I'm sorry Roxas, I'm such!" a hiccup. "such a horrible brother."

"No, I—"

"I am!" Boo-hoo-hooing and the curling closer to me, he mumbled something into my hair and kept on crying some more.

"I won't tell mom, don't worry about it." I sniffled because there was a bit of blood caking.

It was hard to lie and break promises of someone who was getting so much salty eye-water on you and mucus that I just hugged him awkwardly, burying my nose into his dinosaur t-shirt. Whispering to his stomach acid that I wouldn't never ever ever tell, I was a good little boy after all. Sora then laughed with his flamboyant features and cobalt eyes and russet locks. His skin was starting to bronze and I was still pale and lithe, nothing like him.

Despite being identical twins we weren't completely identical. Back then, we were pretty damn close despite some minor differences but of course, time changes and shit happens. He split off from our mimetic trend and adopted mom's happier range of facial expressions and hair color while I adopted my dad's blonde and antisocial tendencies while being able to force a grin ever so often.

I guess in many ways we were like our parents. Sora was allowed to be effeminate and even once our cousin Penelo thought it would be a funny idea to make him wear a dress. We took a picture of it the first time (because it happened many times after that) and it was amusing despite me being just a little bit jealous by the attention. Looking through old memories after the divorce, Mom said that she'd show his first girlfriend like all mother's do.

My sweet mother was sitting with a coffee mug in one hand, her arms tucked against her body, her knees pulled upright to her chest and her long flowing skirts tickling against her ankles. The other side of her was Sora, tucked under her arm, his hair getting stroked like a small animal and he was just milking it. He loved our mom, he really did.

It was like a form of narcissism because of their similarities or maybe it was Oedipus or maybe it was just because relating to me was scary and had the potential to fall apart. Our parents spilt for reasons, I guess and while Sora and I didn't comprehend what infidelity meant and forgot the term before we knew what it meant. It was just. Painful.

Not as though someone is stabbing you with a rusting knife painful, but the toothache. Subtle and you know damned well that eating the delicious looking hot dog-macaroni dish your mother made specifically for _you_ is going to be slipped into the glass of milk, opaque and hiding. Just so the pain will stop. That's why Sora leeched and I watched from the fancy chair.

There mom was, with a pre-pubescent Sora and a cup o' Joe as my dad used to call it and there it was. For the brief split second, memories and tears.

"And then you'll be so embarrassed because it'll be a first date. You'll find a nice girl." Whenever she said that though, Sora looked terrified.

Not in the sense that he was still remembering the days where cooties were an issue and tormenting frogs was an idea of a good time. Or even where girls were just embarrassing and awkward to talk to.

It was the "that's not me" look. The brief split second of him realizing that being with a girl would be bad. It would be betrayal. Maybe even he didn't realize it. In Sora's brain the lapse of fear didn't mean anything. We both knew otherwise. We both knew that one of these things is not like the other. Just from the few split seconds that our eyes meant after that comment Sora looked disheartened and we didn't bring it up once the bedroom door closed later.

This was probably because Mom kept talking. Kept staining her beauty with coffee and Sora withdrew and didn't look too happy being all squished under her arm. She looked happy but sitting all the way across the room on the couch, watching my other half look terrified and watching my mother look like she was a split second from crying and laughing simultaneously, I was distracted.

"Roxas too," I blinked at the fact that she bothered to notice me. She had the most wonderful son she could handle right in her lap. I wasn't necessary.

"You'll both find the nicest of girls and then raise beautiful children, just like yourselves. Kairi is a nice girl, why don't you marry her when you get older?" this made us smile a bit. We loved Kairi with her red hair and pale skin.

My knees mimicked my mother's and my hands were picking at scabs along my calves. The blood bubbled up a little but I ignored the sting and just disregarded it. I missed my mom being truly happy, deep under all of the childhood repression.

Ever since she pushed the stupid red truck in my arms, I felt like I was tainted, just a little. It was because right after they split that she drove us from the sweet sanctuary that was Destiny Islands all the way to a rinky-dink, orange-juice, my-my-that-sure-is-fly, town that was envious of a city called Twilight Town. We were seven when the paperwork and the lawyers and the children and the crying and. And big brother Cloud.

Cloud doesn't get mentioned a lot. Mom doesn't like to bring him up. It's become habitual to ignore him. I never wanted to, though. I wanted him to teach me how to talk to girls and to smuggle porn and give me the lowdown on how smoke cigarettes. Like a replacement of paternity. But he's long gone. Both Cloud and my dad. I've come to terms with this fact; I miss them both so much, so terribly much.

When Cloud was eighteen and fresh from high school, he eloped with this guy. We never met the mystery man until two years later when Cloud came back to get his stuff from his room that was taken over by me due to lack of space and the fact of an empty room upstairs would be weird.

Standing in that doorway, Cloud said sooner or later it'd have to happen. I didn't get why sooner came later and why when I was curled up listening to something vaguely pop-culture related, he paused at the door and looked so depressed. Like passing through the threshold where he held so many memories was just broken and snapped and thrust about like it was the goddamn apocalypse made of sticks and stones that broke my bones at night.

The fights and the memories and the crying and the laughter and where he met Leon whose real name was Squall lingered nostalgically in the air, making it heavy. Even though I was ultimately focusing on trying not to cry, I could feel the pressure crushing him. Breaking him. The fact of knowing that never again he'd be safe and comfortable in the house where everyone but he was invited in. My mom would be much more willing to invite dad's bitch of a step-mom over for lunch than to let her firstborn come back. The unwillingness to admitting defeat was the one quality I didn't take from her.

Tugging my headphones off, I blinked a few times at him and Leon just came up behind him the floorboards creaking and just up and rested his head between Cloud's shoulder-blades. Strong hands covered his chest as if to find solace and I was left awkwardly on the thick comforter, unable to console anyone. Ironic, if I do say so myself.

Cloud let loose a single tear and only I saw it because he didn't heave a huge dramatic sob or anything. I think for a brief moment I saw something else besides the resolve in Cloud's eyes. The realization that he'd never be a part of this family again but the music was too loud for me to think. The only thing I wanted to know is where Leon came from, where he was going and why Cloud was so deeply involved. I had remembered Leon coming in for lemonade once when my mom hired him to mow our lawns I think. But aside from that Cloud, showed no signs of interest. We were all blindsided and confused. At least, Sora and I were.

Cloud was a lot older than us so when he was my age, I was really young. When he had his drama, the pre-eloping drama. All I had was that stupid fire truck and the stupid fight and the nose blood getting on the green of the grass and the fresh crisp look of the sky burned into my brain via irises. Kodak moment framed and admired from time to time. Bubblegum that tasted terrible.

Like, when it's autumn but there are a lot of cars around and when the city pokes up you can see the contour of perfection and the architecture looks so clean because it's not even fully blue. It's more of an off-blue, a gray-blue and white that is hued with azure and tinted with no clouds. Cloud wasn't there either but his eyes were like the sky when he stood in the door so I ignored it. Because they were hazy like the time mom drove me into the heart of Twilight Town, I ignored it. Flipped the frame around so I didn't have to make the connection. I didn't want to love something so sad.

Averting my eyes and then looking back, my lips formed around his name. "Cloud…" It was all that my throat managed before my process of ignoring reached its peak. Before my brain locked everything out and before I became completely hopeless of things returning to normalcy.

Sora was smart. Well, I mean, like, he's ridiculously thick-headed and pretty slow and probably lacks some brain cells but he's smart enough. He was the one that checked the mail and whenever Cloud would send a birthday card or vague letter or the extremely rare postcard, he'd sneak them in past mom and bursting with excitement, read them to me, sprawled out on my mattress.

"_Happy Birthday!_

_Leon and I wished that we could visit but mom would probably beat me up with that baseball bat she keeps in the closet. Don't worry though, there are other years. Anyway, sorry I couldn't send a present, it'd be a bit too obvious. Enjoy the cake!_

_Love you both,_

_Cloud & Leon."_

Alongside a check for thirty money a piece. Sora and I bought skateboards with it and showed them off, acting cool. The works.

Mom cut up every single piece of evidence of Cloud, that's why he had to tuck it in his waistband and dash upstairs after leaving a stack of bills on the counter. Nothing was spared by her, absolutely fucking nothing.

From the photos of his graduation where his teeth are perfect, to the time he went to prom with Tifa. Especially that picture. But more-so just the Cloud part of it. Almost as if he didn't exist but because Tifa looked so damn pretty, and she was the only one about. It had been a professional photo that cost my mom much more than it should've so at least one half of it survived. Prom was a bad experience for Cloud, I think. I don't know the details but a month after, mom and dad split up and Cloud cried a lot. It was like a revelation. He stopped calling Tifa but mom ignored this fact and put the photo of Tifa looking gorgeous on the refrigerator. Thankfully Cloud never noticed it, and if he did, didn't say a word.

Through the shock of their divorce and the stress and strain of having to change schools, change friends, change life that made him realize that men and women don't work or something. Sora speculated the thought, not me but lord be damned if I didn't agree.

Knowing my brother, Cloud probably did think like that. Mom would scream at him uncontrollably that it just didn't work whatsoever. Beating into his brain and be vague concurrently. I don't even know if that meant Cloud or dad but she screamed when she thought no one was listening. Even me and Sora got a few snippets of yelling from time to time. Cloud's mentality failed because of her and he became a loner.

Cloud and I were close, when he used to live with us. He was silent and smart and I strived to be like him in every way. That's why I started bawling when he came back. The fact that we'd never be able to have a movie marathon of suspense thrillers that he'd sneak by mom or take me out for ice cream. Sora had mom, I had Cloud and no one was lonely.

He had left in the middle of the night, without a word. Apparently, in accordance to his letters, he finished high school and had a job on the side without anyone knowing; since he used Fenrir to get around he never depended on mom much after the divorce.

He got accepted into college entirely by using the money he saved up and worked his ass off for. I can't say that I'm not proud of him.

Leon was there the whole time, I presume. They got married or at least recognized by the state that they were life partners. It was so highly reckless, is what mom said. She didn't bitch and tell me to avert my eyes this time but I could hear her hateful, spiteful, unhappy piece of advice because they were so _wrong_.

It upset me, because I could hardly help but feel like I belonged like that. Like when Cloud tugged my gangly frame into a tight hug, why he looked so shocked by how similar we appeared. How Leon smiled at me and waved a small wave and how. And how the closet was filled to the brim with Cloud-things. The things I hid under the guise of my things. How I hid like Sora because how mom reacted was bad.

Tucking behind Guess Who and Connect Four boxes were his boxes and probably, if it could materialize, my sexuality. Clinging for dear life to the plaster that is the interior of my closet.

To be honest, even though mom rid herself of all of the things that Cloud was related to, like all of the shiny super-polished trophies he got when it was just mom, dad and Cloud. All of the family photos that was shoved into a blue floral box instead of an album. The silly photos. The baby photos. The irreplaceable things. She was wiping out Cloud. I salvaged what I could; I salvaged the memories and hid them away. It was hard thing to do; I skipped school to keep myself reminded that Cloud was my brother, even more than Sora was. Searching everything that I could and not even caring unless it was related to Cloud.

"_He doesn't need this anymore, he's just a faggot."_

I couldn't even fathom what it would be like to find out all of these things to be gone. For someone to reject someone else so badly.

"_Get out! Get out! Get out you filthy faggot!"_

In attempt to bring my brother back, I curled up under the bed, the space small and I pictured all of my thoughts being wiped, as if I were the chalk board and my mother, in all of her fury, the eraser. We clashed and cried and then all gone, no refunds, bye-bye. There go the hopes and dreams and sentimentality. Like a confused little boy that I was, bawling my eyes out because it was a disgusting emotion. Dragging down to Cloud's level was worse than getting yelled at because I didn't want to do anything but sleep and cry and space out life in perfect increments and preserve those increments. To ignore my forgetful tendencies.

"_Don't become a faggot Roxas!"_

My imbecile of a brother would totally cup my cheeks and force a smile and then be completely smitten with someone's voice or a lock of Riku's hair because that was about the level importance he held me at.

Like the first time I got high with Olette when we were supposed to be studying, it wasn't that important and no one had to know that we accidentally kissed, just to test the ground waters. To break through and explore, to uncover new territory and to cut back on land mass. Olette couldn't meet my eyes after that and it was the final little thing that made it for certain so no one should blame me. I did _try_ to stop ruining my mom's dream but the idea of familiarity and the idea and concept of someone who will watch over me is much more in the 'me gusta' category than me having to hover and protect. They can go and watch over themselves, women are weak beings and I don't have time.

I'm too busy missing my brother and wanting to know why my twin can't talk to me normally, like when he'd cradle my head and apologize. I was forced into him wearing high socks and occasionally dicking around with me. With our shorts pulled up to our nipples at five in the morning I forgot who had stopped laughing first. This probably is because that memory is tucked away, deep and hidden.

Kairi and Riku take up one hundred and thirty/fifty percent of Sora's time. Not quite thirty, not quite fifty, most definitely one hundred. I'm not part of that because I'm depressed and he is the sunshine.

Sora was distracted during that time. Mom was drinking, I think. I don't remember, I was brooding and missing and yearning and looking at people differently and experiencing. All in Twilight Town.

That's where Sora met his "soul-mate". Actually, it was because of Kairi that I started to believe in miracles and started believing in people and even though it seemed really shocking, I believed in love. If not the romantic kind, most definitely all others. Sora and I loved the fuck out of Kairi. We were lonely and Kairi was talented at so much and we all thought that red Kool-Aid was the _shit_ and that the crazy lady who was the cashier for the local grocery store was batshit insane.

"Hi, are you new here? Whassyour names?" Kairi's eyes shone as her feet dangled off the plastic mesh playscape.

Sora grinned, his cheeks slightly pink; "I'm Sora and this is my twin, Roxas. We jus' moved in."

"Cool!" the auburn girl grinned. "My name is Kairi, I live in that direction." She pointed vaguely behind her and Sora scrambled up to where she was sitting, leaving my side. I just sat on the swingset and watched as they buzzed with happy feelings.

She was a tomboy, yet ultra girly and would cause a heap load of havoc with us, not even worrying about getting sticks in her hair. With the exception of time that we tried to crawl under Maleficent's house to see if it reached China. She didn't trust the woman and was scared the house was collapse with us underneath.

All the other times she never held back though. We'd drag her out to the tiny, little, rinky-dink, cutesy-cutesy, apple juice colored park and kick dust and scream and laugh and push and shove and tug and share awkward first kisses and meet more kids our age and the apples of the sky and the apples in our hearts were plentiful with seeds. Kairi planted and watered the seeds always, spreading her perkiness throughout everyone.

Whenever we were apart from one another, apart from our trio that turned into a much larger group, it was like the growth of the seeds halted and things hurt and it was a violent reminder that Sora would sometimes beat my face into the ground because he was angry and kick my stomach because he was hungry and cry into my chest because mom smacked him once for back-talking.

He couldn't help himself. My wonderful one-of-a-kind brother was and still is stubborn and light-hearted and so damn excitable and head-strong that for my mom to try and wrap that up is just incorrect. She wasn't actually wrapping him up but the control was there. Sora and forces of power weren't the wisest thing to mix and mesh and meld but after awhile Sora learned to shut up and take it.

He's just like that. Once mom hit him, I was right next to him and I think she meant to hit me but instead of crying or yelling right away, he just took my hand in his and squeezed.

It was almost as if to say "that hit, it was meant for you."

When I squeezed back, it meant _thankyou_.

Later we laughed like hyenas and watched old cartoons. That's just how we rock it and roll it and smoke it, bro. Spoken completely monotone, I forget how white I am and how internally much of a gangster fills my shoes and dang, how much I love Sora but hate the Japanese language. Like the phase he went through trying to speak it and how happy he was when he realized that his name was in the wretched language and how mom thought it would suit him. Sora boasted about it for a week.

Sora was born three minutes before me and relished the hell out of it usually, rubbing it in my face and calling me a baby but because of his boasting rights and mom hitting him rights, he could call me a baby my whole damn life and it wouldn't make up for it. For all the bullshit he puts up for me.

Thankfully, she doesn't do it often. Hit him that is. It's only when she's drunk or when he fights her. And nowadays Sora only fights me and Riku so we're good. Because at least when him and I brawl it out like what we had when we were kids on repeat, it's not really serious and in the end we end up being okay. I'm not too sure about him and Riku and I don't think it ever gets physical in the sense of fists but I worry about Sora.

He's a smart kid and all but at that, he's also quite outrageous and dim-witted. Wonderful and sharp during school but dense as a fucking rock. A pluses and split lips could sum up my brother with the exception of his baby blues, light sheen of freckles and the mole that is right below his left shoulder blade. I ignore his flaws, even if he does leave the TV on.

I wish he took after Cloud instead, who would be the one to yell at us with our baby teeth and collector edition trading cards. If he took after Cloud he'd be smart and insightful and extremely perceptive but Sora, for the sake of everyone else who actually likes talking to a person as opposed an angsty wall, didn't.

Actually, I don't think either of us did even though I liked to believe otherwise for myself. According to Kairi and Sora, I'm pretty dense and angsty and I don't notice shit but they don't know how much they like one another. Or actually, scratch that, how much they _did_ like each other.

In past tense. Nowadays Kairi is always hanging around Saïx and that gang.

Pence calls them stoners and crackwhores, and while that's practically every social clique, I've never seen any paraphernalia or the usual signs like the crappy t-shirts, ratty hair or just general "I'm a badass" attitude that is also playing it of as the "I'm calm too." I chilled with them once so I could get some weed for me and Olette but in the end couldn't put up with their shitty personalities that were so highly egotistical and deeply shallow, and so I left. I told Olette that I ran out of money and we just went down to the gas station instead, deciding army men were more important. I tried to ignore Kairi as I walked away from them.

Then again, even though they are stoners, and while Kairi really does hang around those guys when she's supposed to be with Sora it just doesn't happen, things that people say they are going to do don't fucking happen. People don't know anything.

I learned this fact early on, I realized that when mom packed up all our things. She sent Sora and me over to Penelo's house to play for a few days and when we came back dad had a black eye and all of these boxes were packed in front of a U-Haul that was fading from orange into a worn white-yellow-beige-sunshine.

Biting my lip I knew the world was going to change a little bit if not even a lot. It was going to be shaken and stirred and tossed out for the next day then picked back up and kicked some more.

My life was going to become a fucking soccer game. And I was the soccer ball. Hopefully, the goalie was nice because being missed after kicked really far doesn't feel too good. Still, I was the vinyl plastic, black and white.

Or maybe Sora was because he was the one who made mom's health insurance get wasted. I didn't even understand the concept but his broken bones never meant much to me. Drinking a nasty off-brand of Kool-Aid, it didn't matter to me at all. We couldn't afford nice things and it didn't fucking matter. Just as long as my shoes lit up or my pants had a cool name like "Cargo", "Khaki" or "Denim", that's all that mattered. Besides, those are the important things anyhow.

When I wanted nice things, nice food, nice anything just a nice cushion of gentleness, I'd go to Kairi's. Always. Even if Sora was already there I'd curl up on their annoying leather couches and doze off while watching Nickelodeon and some new spunky cartoon. Kairi and Sora would be upstairs practicing kissing like confused children and I'd be stuck on the stupid leather and the Kool-Aid. Sometimes Naminé, who I didn't even know was related to Kairi for the longest time, would come downstairs from her cage, or so she called it, and would watch them with me.

She was blonde despite no one else being blonde in her family and so we got along just fine for some reason. Like, just because of one shallow similarity of the European look we both had, we were suddenly the same. While Naminé and I didn't personality-wise get along we were both so desperate for someone's attention that even someone you didn't like too much was enough.

"Roxas, do you like to draw?" She asked me once, her passive eyes and soft tone touching my ears gently.

Glaring at her for talking and interrupting my show, I hissed back "_No_, drawing is for…" a pause to scrape my brain for an insult. "Fags!" I blurted it out because I heard the older boys that used to hang around Cloud say it. It wasn't good, I don't think because Cloud got extremely offended and we didn't see much of Barret after that.

She looked highly insulted and didn't even comment back. I didn't tell her, but the truth was that I did like to draw but I was terrible and could barely manage stick figures while she was just detailed and good and I am no good. Then she tried to make me cry later. She was drawing me and I was mean and I knew I did wrong but because I'm a good boy, I don't cry.

We'd bicker and from not even arm's length, it didn't look like bickering it was just tiny fluctuations in her voice would indicate to me that, yes, most certainly yes, she was angry that I changed the channel. And most certainly yes she was really pissed that I not only ate all of her chocolate she so kindly offered to me but I drank the rest of the grape Kool-Aid too. But I'd secretly boast. I'd do a victory dance across my brain because _she was a stupid girl anyway_.

She was probably going to hit me in the nose had her mom not burst through the door with her arms stuffed with shopping bags, Kool-Aid and chocolate in said bags and soon the problem was solved. No more issues from her and I was always sent home with Sora short after, he was happy and breathless and I was unhappy and filled with oxygen. Pushed away like magnets that were of the same polarity, we were forced back home where mom worked three jobs and hardly rested.

It seems a bit sad, when I think on it. Everyone that is always supposed to be holding us in seems to push us away somewhere. While mom and dad packed our things for the Big Move we weren't allowed to watch, while Naminé, Kairi and their parents ate, we weren't allowed to watch. Never ever was Sora and I on the right side of the personal boundaries. Even though that Sora touched Kairi's boobs once she reached freshman year and even though they were going to have sex with each other for the first time and even though I was in the room right next to them trying to block it out yet thinking of such ridiculously mundane things to repress it, it was the wrong side.

While Kairi moaned a little, and all I could think was "Gosh, did mom pick up milk today." I knew I was on the wrong side of something.

Maybe it's just because I'm like that, maybe it's because when Sora made a husky giggle that was so not him I just felt like dying a little because I would probably sound like that. Maybe it was because I just wanted to start smoking cigarettes to fix the nervous twitch that happened from that point on when I yawned, brushed my teeth and yelled at Axel who I wish I could forget and block out, use white out and push away and not adore as much as I do. However, with a certain amount of positive there must be equal amount negative and I hate that fucker so damn much.

But that is neither here nor there. It wasn't like my mom saying she was going to fix things and didn't make much of a difference. It wasn't like me leaving that damn note made much of a difference. Because it wasn't like any of them really cared. Especially not Axel. And I'm not being angsty or bitchy or self-pitying in the _ohwoeisme!_ sense, I'm being serious. Sometimes, there are those people who no one really gives a shit about. If you can't name one—you're not truly living.

Sora is, despite us fighting and being more distant as of late, is the only one who cares for me. He was the only one who did in the first place. And Cloud. But since Cloud is long and gone there's not much I can do. Although I did find his address from an old birthday card he sent us a month ago, and then I packed my bags.

When running away, people usually should think about the logical things to take. They should think that "Hey! If no one takes me in; food, water, money, and a pocketknife should be on the tippy top of the necessities list." At the point when I was runningrunningrunning I wasn't coherent really. I was livid and thrashing and packing as much of my shit that I needed, nothing logical, just clothing.

The small amount of munny on the bedside table were thrown in, next my boxers, then a pair of jeans, then a few shirts, I brought my tooth brush and hairbrush so I could look presentable and then I scrawled a don't look for me note. The kind typical of spy-movies where the whole espionage bull is about thisclose of being blown and the guy, despite having to lie to these people, loves them and doesn't want them to worry. Because that shit happens in real life too, y'know. Ha fucking ha.

So there I was, breathing raggedly with my stupid messenger bag stuffed to the brim with not much cash and no food and Sora looking shocked in the front door. I rolled my eyes at him and unlocked my bike from the mini-rack Leon installed one angry Christmas.

Then I booked it. Without a word. Just like Cloud. I hauled some ass—my destination unknown even though the little piece of paper said with Cloud's new last name;

Squall & Cloud Leonhart

7819 West Church BLVD

Hallow Bastion.

A name is not a destination. West Church BLVD meant about as much to me as tuna salad and while one was going to save my life and while, because I couldn't find them in one night. And while I _was_ tucked in a run-down Laundry Mat eating tuna salad, and while because no one seemed to know West Church BLVD, or didn't seem to notice that I was in need, I ended up kind of lost in Hallow Bastion. It's vast cityscape and tall buildings and scabs of people and the buzzing of cell phones and the snap of busy streets, I didn't know anything then.

Mom made sure we didn't know where Cloud was living, and thus directions were never passed onto us, my brain hovered the idea of finding someone whose internet I could borrow so I could get directions but it was too late, I was already at least a few miles away before it occurred to me, but it was too far and no way in hell was I turning back after that. All I could do was pedal and think.

Sora didn't even stop me; maybe it was because he didn't know that he wouldn't see me until at least a month later. Maybe it was because he didn't realize what happened prior to my moment of irrationality. Maybe it was because he loved me so much that holding me back wouldn't be too good. Maybe it's because he trusted me to not get hurt.

Listen; it's cruel but the only one you should ever trust is yourself. Even then that might not be too good. Trusting people is a liability though that will most likely get you either in trouble or in my situation.

Trusting Axel was the moment where my life ended, I suppose. That is if I were to pinpoint it down to the very millisecond. If there was such thing as a billisecond; I could probably pinpoint it down to that too. It's just knowing that Axel was so unaffected pisses me off. Not that _you_ know what he did. And you won't even hear the story from me so don't go and get all excited or something.

Needless to say, he's the worst. No matter how much Sora praises him or Riku gives him sideways glances of notification, it's just the simplistic raw nature that he is parasitic for me.

He showed up randomly, and it was like that cliché "New Kid On The Block" feel, only unlike the usual cliché, no one in Twilight Town really seemed to give a shit, except for Kairi who cares about everyone only because there's a chance to manipulate them. Anyway, so Axel Trident—what the hell kind of shitty name is that anyway?--showed up, became part of the student body at Twilight High, and then was just whisked away by Twilight's Town quaint yet uncaring populous.

Despite everyone practically going out of their way to ignore him, the shock of red atop his head was a bit hard to miss when everyone had blonde or brown hair, with the occasional bit of odd color (see Kairi and Riku.) But for the most part, everyone was the same as everyone else.

This is Suburbia, it is to be expected.

Part of me believed that Axel didn't like anything more than just shaking things up, on his third day attending Twilight High, he found a way into the P.A. room and announced to everyone one that he was about to do something ridiculous and jump from the top of the building, the west side. Just so that when the sun set, it'd also be his life setting. Everyone murmured amongst themselves, I felt languid and looking above the heads I could see Sora freaking out.

"See, guys, I just can't do it. Live like this. So," he clicked his tongue, a snapping watery sound warbled through the box on the wall. "Now I'm going to end it all."

Like a poet, like a loser. Like the only friendship that he probably had. In those three days, Sora had managed to at least get his number and considered them to be acquaintances, if not friends. My brother had that affect on people, you were drawn to him even if you didn't want to and a lot of people _did_ want to get up and leave.

Maybe that was the true reason why Axel closed the PA system and then hauled ass up to the roof, because of Sora and his light sheen of freckles that you had to squint to notice in the first place, was going to be sad.

Students pressed to the windows and saw him, his gangly figure indeed facing west, the courtyard below him. My classroom had perfect view of his suicide; a movie on display for 8.50 munny per adult Admission.

"What an idiot, seriously." Larxene, one helluva stoner bitch grumbled beside me, as if recognizing my prescience and then from that requiring my words of approval. "I talked to him in my physics class, and he's all shit, totally a bluff." Rolling her eyes she cracked her gum and it made me notice the speckled acne across her chin. Hair pulled back she turned to me and nodded again. Ignoring her I turned my attention to Axel, his arms out-spread like a crucifix.

Principal Tseng and a gaggle of teachers were pouring from the front door to call him down, to deny him his ability to die on their property; mainly because of the lawsuit that could go against the school, if not even the District.

"Omigawd, Roxas, do you think he's going to do it?" Sora nudged me and bit his lip, baby blues watery and ready to cry just in case the melodramatic teen decided to play swimming pool with the ground.

I shrugged, damn my classmates assuming I cared about their words over the spectacle before me. While Sora did matter, this was a trivial issue and was about as important to me as Bill Gate's phone number, it's not like I'm going to really call the guy up if I ever got it. We probably wouldn't have much in common anyway.

In the distance, past the broken teeth that were the silhouette of houses, was the blaring of sirens. We found out later that the lovely receptionist; Missus Gainsborough, had called 9-1-1 right after Axel pulled the stunt of breaking the lock of the PA System Control Room. From my desk, I could see him, his body arched a little bit, peering over the edge of the yellow bricked school, windows below him were littered with student faces, all looking up to see what was happening. I couldn't stop thinking about breakfast cereal.

Mister Tseng used a bullhorn, and upwards shouted, "Hey, you need to get down from there." Like an arrogant Asian douche bag. I wanted Axel to jump and crush him with his gawky frame.

At this Axel smirked devilishly and shouted something down that was inaudible across the schoolyard. Whatever it was pissed of Tseng though because he looked around to his secretaries and the teachers embarrassedly. "Boy, you need to come down; there is no reason to end your life." His voice quivered and my heart was a steady beat, a low breathing and a fleck of dust against a windowpane, our teacher had left the room long ago and people were gratuitously vulgar. Not that I give a flying fuck.

Another strain of words and he looked up to our classroom. Sora had scrambled over my desk, opened the window and belted from his spot. "Axel! Dude, stop being an idiot and just come down!" Voice trailing off, Axel still managed to get the memo.

This amused the redhead in a way that no one really knew. Three days seemed like a bit short of a time to be obnoxious like this, and none of the student body's brains noticed a trend. The whole time I felt like he was staring at me and my skin tingled, a good and happy buzz like a shot of bourbon.

I know it's ridiculous and selfish but his eyes met mine as he looked across the way and just smiled. Like a bad movie where the lovers meet exponentially and eloquently, perfectly scripted.

Personally, I knew there wouldn't be a broken body with legs bent awkwardly, bones jutting out of the torn skin, like Larxene had prophesized, bitchiness and all. Axel, although I didn't know him personally, didn't seem like the type who would just up and kill himself. He had too proud of a chin and too curious of a stare to even begin to do anything more than bother others for the sake of amusement.

Example: A horribly awkward and thick-shouldered Junior was getting his lunch; pea soup with a piece of rye bread and a small pudding. Just as he was about to pay, Axel tripped him and the teen's humongous sideburns were traced with puke green liquid. He cried all the way to the nurse's office because a rather effeminate looking male totally shrieked and shoved him to the ground and called him dis_gusting_. The funny part is, or rather, I find it reverse stereotypical. But that guy was a football player and the jocks gave Axel a high five for it, even if it was the team captain.

"Xaldin will get over it!" one of them cackled.

"Hey, man you want to sit with us, y'know?" People were cruel and he turned them down, sitting in front of me instead, which frankly, didn't fare well for anyone. Except for Axel because he's _untouchable_.

Back-tracking a bit, when the fire department forced him down the fire ladder, when the councilor talked to him, when he looked back up at our window and class resumed, everyone found it to be just a ploy for attention and no one was the slightest bit shocked when he bowed low as if the show was stupendous. When my heart pounded in my chest and Larxene scoffed. When he got off with a warning for a first-time offense.

I couldn't blame him though; Axel had a boisterous and loud attitude to him. He was put-off by having no one flock to him. Without stunts like that, random Freshman girls wouldn't approach him with forlorn faces telling him they were glad he didn't follow through. I approached him and called him an idiot. He smiled.

"Ain't that the truth?" Clapping me over the back in the middle of the hall he belted outwards, almost like Sora, only inside.

"Behold! This boy is extremely smart, praise him." Random kids trying to get to class chuckled a bit and ignored it. I glowered and pulled away from him like he burned. Snarling at him that he was still an idiot.

"Hey," his eyes crinkled when he smiled. "You're a nice kid though, even though you _did_ just insult my problems." Shaking his head and arms akimbo, he chuckled with his head hanging.

Looking up, he smiled lopsidedly, his canines gleaming and the tattoos on his face. "What's your name cutie?"

Skirting around that issue, I pedaled some more. My feet were rushing and my thighs burn but I couldn't stop at all, I couldn't ever even dare to stop pedaling because the old missus Kramer, crazy coot, would pull me by and ask me for tea and how my mother was doing and I don't want to talk about my family so I ignore her as she's watering her lawn and pedal _faster faster faster_ past Kairi's cul-de-sac and past the curve that takes me to Riku's house and past all sorts of things and fastfastfast because it burns everything burns on my body and my back wants to crack but sitting up would take away from the propulsion that my calve muscles are putting forth. In physics they taught us how to calculate how much energy is being put forth but my brain is too scrambled for me to remember.

All I can remember is Axel smirking at me through the mirror and the watery suds still on the grooves of my fingers.

(**s**.)

When I met Riku, the only thing I could think of was how pretty 'she' was. Tugging 'her' hand into the small park, 'she' smiled at me and giggled a small giggle. Kairi knew 'her' before I did and I couldn't help but admit I was jealous. That is until Kairi referred to Riku as a boy then it all got awkward. Embarrassed at being effeminate Riku slugged me across the jaw. We were friends ever since.

Inhabiting the small park downtown, we were the rulers to our own country. Myself being the king, decked out in my small crown made of paper, Kairi was my queen and Riku; my knight. Roxas used to join in before he got into indoor activities and would play the role as evildoer.

"Now," a cough, more candy meeting the teeth. "Now, stand over at that pole and turn around, we have to hide our kingdom before you can attack us."

Roxas would pout and then form fists and then shout at me, as I dashed across the wood chips and fruit shapes, "So-_ra_!" Left alone, I was too far off to see the tears forming at being rejected and left behind. Being forced to fight a losing battle.

Laughing, Kairi would always insist we hide it really good so Roxas would spend forever trying to get it but then fail. Even though we were twins and Kairi was a friend to both of us, my brother always struck a sore spot in her and made her extremely callous. He was too dense to realize that she liked me and not him though, I felt bad for him.

As Riku jumped down from the plastic roof, with a stick clutched between his blister-covered fingers, he resumed a fighting stance. Poor Roxas, donned in his black cape and hood that we fashioned out of someone of Cloud's that was old, looked like a sad yet scary boy.

Riku snarled, his imagination allowing me and Kairi to watch like angels from the playscape above, haloed and completely innocent.

"Why! Why do you have the keyblade?" Riku belted, the sound cushioning my cheeks, I felt warm and happy and interested. What on _earth_ was a keyblade? Riku watched too many movies.

"_Shut up!_" Then Roxas slugged Riku in the nose.

Valiantly trying to save his own country from destruction, his only method of rebelling against being stuck with such a shitty role, he coped by shoving me off the top of the plastic, worn, playscape and then punching my nose in, kicking Riku in the shin then sparing Kairi after she started crying. Thankfully for that, we changed his role to knight beside Riku. And after that and he'd still seem displeased.

"Sora, being under control of you is _stupid_." He pouted, fingers groping at the plastic tic-tac-toe board that was a commonality in local parks.

"Yeah _So_ra." Xion agreed, holding Roxas's hand, causing my brother to limp his head a bit.

Xion, some girl who stalked Roxas like he was the cure for cancer, would insist every time that we would set up our make-believe world, she was married to Roxas. Roxas, being afraid of cooties after being told lots of horrible nasty stories á la Cloud, was completely terrified. She clung and melded her body into his, and all my poor little brother could do was take it like a man and hate every moment of it.

Her cropped hair was like a boy stylistically. Girlishly black and shiny she'd make Roxas compliment her, and call her cute. Though with her boyish tendencies, everyone insisted that she was a dude. Roxas was not an exception and because of her, and this is just me, but I think her looks and personality shaped him.

Her tomboyish nature caught Roxas off-guard because the only women he'd ever been around had been Kairi, mom and Naminé. All three of them poured estrogen from their pores while Xion acted like a boy, talked like a boy, stalked bugs and kicked up dirt. Still; she was a girl and wanted to marry Roxas so she had cooties. Lots of them. Especially the ones we called the smooch-smooch cooties. Lips puckered she slobbered on Roxas's mouth and he cried all the way home, clutching my hand with his pudgy digits and hiccupping and when mom asked what was wrong, I just ushered him upstairs to divulge himself in his Gameboy.

It was a traumatizing experience but it had me thinking about kissing Kairi and how you do it properly. Through the premature Xion, everyone questioned themselves. Riku would try to hold Kairi's hand more, and while this confused me because Riku had told me once while we smooshed our bodies under a bush during a game of hide-and-seek, that he really, _really_ did not like Kairi. That to him, she was a devil spawn and was always trying to take me away.

Retrospect, I should have seen it then, but then again, hindsight should be dubbed blind sight because the shoulda, coulda, woulda of the past was just too much sometimes. Riku then, a week later, kissed me full on the mouth and we didn't bring it up for awhile.

Even still, Riku and I would fight over Kairi's tiny, clean hands while Xion and Roxas would sulk and act superior. Although this was more so on Roxas's part than Xion, she would imitate him for the sake of stealing his lip virginity he reclaimed after hours of sobbing into my grass-stained shirt. He wished her away so he could be the king to his own world, without that little girl existing.

Eventually, and no one know why this happened, but Xion just disappeared one day. Kairi mumbled something about how she moved and Riku rolled his eyes. Roxas stopped hanging out with us and stayed indoors. Nestled in a huge pile of pillows my mom kept in the linen closet, he'd play Super Nintendo for hours and hours and minutes and days while we were attempting to hula hoop with the new pink, sparkly one Kairi bought the weekend before last. From the yard and the large oak tree that would later be the staircase to bad things, I could see Roxas glancing towards the window, almost as if to say, "Guys, guys come inside I don't want to be lonely."

We ignored this fact.

There are times when you _know_ something is wrong. Like a bad taste in your mouth and somewhere in my brain I knew something happened with Roxas and Xion. As a kid though, I couldn't grasp it, he couldn't grasp it, hell. Even Xion, the harbinger of the hell in Roxas's life couldn't grasp what happened. But everyone knew and the signs were there but it was unspoken. None of us kids cared what happened, we just wanted to play. That's why we left him alone. It was an ominous being that lurked behind the incident and like a huge scary house on Halloween, you don't really feel up to trekking to get candy if you're gonna scream anyway. Scary things were scary; things that weren't scary were filed away into a folder labeled "everything else."

Now being a teenager, I wish I could hold that same naiveté. Whoever said ignorance was bliss is seriously, a genius because I'd rather not know. While perched on the back of Kairi's sofa, a fresh can of orange soda in my hand and the television remote in the other, I'd seriously wish I couldn't know. My brain was vast and absorbed a lot, every speckle of dust seemed to be encrypted and stored for a later date. Bound in a novel with the cover being my face.

I told this to Roxas once and he just scoffed. "What are you gonna do with all the information once it's over?" He had black nail polish on his fingers and a studded bracelet. With my bright colors and sunshine, I didn't understand why he wouldn't want a brain filled with smart.

In Kairi's living room they have a lot of plants, I think only one of them is fake, as if to say that Kairi herself is a dulled plastic plant, collecting dust while the others are thriving. Vengeance is gurgling in my stomach or maybe it's just the soda but I drink some more and glare at the entertainment center. Her dad forked over a lot of money for it and her mother just bought Naminé some more Kool-Aid.

Kairi, right about the time that we entered high school, started acting weird. It was like something malevolent possessed her right into treating Naminé worse, snapping at Riku and just giving Roxas a hard time. She treated me decently though. With soft smiles reserved for none other she'd kiss my cheek and tell me a happy birthday while snapping at Roxas to stop snooping through her expansive purse. He was wrong while I was right, always, akin to a disturbed parent who played favorites Kairi would blame Roxas when things went bad Smiling to his face, when my door closed and when we splayed over the plaid bedspread, she'd grumble about how rude he was. How he just needed to stop being so pessimistic and that really, he just needs to smile.

"He's so fake. It's painful." Chewing on her bottom lip, she rolled her eyes, hands forming a steeple above her extroverted belly-button.

So says the girl that cakes on the makeup and forces a smile so no one asks. Like a bad screamo song, she lacked a punch line and originality.

I think by that point her parents realized that Naminé had a future while Kairi was just going to marry into money or something. While I still held Kairi's hand and her belly expanded little by little, I couldn't help but agree with their views. Thankfully, I wasn't going to make it rich.

I mean, I love Kairi but since we started dating things haven't been going so well. I'm sure this is selfish of me to say because I'm still prolonging the relationship, but I don't want to be around her anymore. We don't do anything but talk idly and watch cheap television. We don't even have sex which concerns me. As I cup her belly that's firm and expanding, so it's like balloon shoved under her shirt, I don't want to voice my worries.

Instead, after rustling through my armoire that I inherited from my grandmother, I pulled out my little box, my box of secrets and lying. After removing my pre-rolled blunt, I also tucked my lighter into my palm and closed the box, setting it back under the piles of clothing and old books.

Kairi splayed over, on her back and a smile teasing her lips, the sparkles from her lip gloss shining in the receding sunlight. With the rillo between my lips, I could taste the chocolate tinge to the paper, Saïx was a nice guy and prepared it himself, I watched him as his bony fingers premeditatedly splayed the weed inside the empty, brown-tinged paper. After handing it to me, he smiled creepily and Kairi and I left quickly after that.

Striking the lighter and letting the flame flicker for a few seconds before touching it to the paper, I took a long hit, let it rest in my mouth before coaxing it into my lungs. The taste of weed against my tongue was brought back up as I coughed roughly and passed it to Kairi. She curled her dainty, manicured fingers around it and then took it between those sparkle lips of her, with such skill my brain, in the back that tries to whisper lies to me, asked why she never had sex with me. not even head, I've been succumbed to masturbating for three years while maintaining a pathetic relationship to boot.

As soon as she dove back in for another hit, I took it from her and used the smoke burning the tops of my lungs to ignore how angry I was getting at her. I turned my head upward and stared at the ceiling fan, the blades blowing thick gusts of air onto my face, smilesmilesmile. Kairi pried the rillo from my fingers and then used my belt loops to drag me onto the bed with her.

Hits passed by my lips and the THC flooding my brain numbed everything. As I breathed in clean air and choked and coughed, I wanted water.

"Sora, I love you." she murmured and smoked some more. Holding it in, her eyes fluttered behind her lids, the mascara perfect, without clumps. After coughing, a quick force, thickened saliva urging itself up like the first time she got morning sickness, she casually passed it back to me, I heard footsteps and Roxas paused by the door. His feet held such a nice silhouette and I guffawed, throwing my body forward and drowning myself by taking, what was probably my sixth hit. Roxas cracked the door open and sighed heavily.

"Sora?"

Smiling through my hit I stood up. "I love you!" I burst out, my eyes burning a little from the smoke and I handed the joint to Kairi, a sign to tell her to finish it as I wrapped my body in Roxas. My eyes watered and I rubbed my face into his shirt. My heart pounded.

"Dude, you reek." My shoulders shook and water poured from my eyes and Kairi was choking some more as her bronchi rejecting the lull of the marijuana. Roxas was such a nice person and in the back of my skull, where the little bumps are, it lacked feeling and the emotion of his knees entranced me as the tears bubbled up.

Kairi called my name but I couldn't hear her, I just knew Roxas would be gone soon. Pushing from me, Roxas spoke something and then took the rest of the rillo from Kairi, retreating to his room to smoke it himself, by himself, and then I closed the door and curled up next to Kairi. Our eyes reddened and I smiled at her, the pink of her eyes ruining her "pretty girl" look. But I was just too high to worry about it, as I grinned at her I laughed loudly.

"Blow me." I breathed out through my convulsion giggles. Kairi chuckled a bit and then suctioned to my neck, her teeth grazing against the skin and my world laughed. My armoire was hysterically mocking me, and Kairi moved my shirt up so she could nibble on the skin below my belly button. All my blood was rushing to my dick and I wanted to pull away.

Coughing a little, I tried to imagine someone else unbuttoning my pants to help with the process. My brain glued itself to Riku and my member throbbed. Kairi's cell phone buzzed violently and she pulled away. My dick throbbed again. I thought about Riku.

Resting up on my elbows, my face felt like it was melting off then being ironed back on again only to slip and slide and ignore exoskeleton animals. Kairi got off the bed, phone still against her ear and then she nodded, sighed, spoke something that I ignored and then gestured for me to pull my shirt down. Or maybe I knew it wasn't going to happen so my hands moved of their own accord, tugging the material over my umbilical cord remains and buttoned my pants. And tried so hard to not think about Riku.

Backtracking about three years and I would have spilled out my guts onto the floor just to hug Kairi but now, after the freshness of the relationship was really muted and the dead horse was beaten, everything was mundane again.

Kairi and I do the same thing we do, every single day. Part of me wants to whine and yell and tell her "Woman! Change it up a little!" but I can't. She holds no problem with it, as far as I can tell. Tilting her head in an apologetic manner, she applied eye drops wordlessly and I noticed the white sedan out in my driveway, through the branches of the oak tree.

With her purse around her shoulder she spread her arms out, looking down at her body. "Do I look okay?" I laughed some more and then nodded, rolling off the bed and stepping in front of the window. With my pinky finger I traced smiley faces in the fog that was forming since the autumn air was soothing into winter. My dick was still a little bit hard. My mind focused on Riku.

Kairi and my relationship was boring and on a time schedule. Perfectly content, sitting beside me at breakfast when I actually get to school on time, holding my hand to class and then after being absent from my life for the whole day, returning to my side, chipper as can be. Someone from afar could see there were problems with it because after we started dating, Kairi and I didn't talk much or do much.

Sure, we had our moments; like the time we tried to make sandwiches that were synonymous with the word awesome—and mind you, they were the shit. Or we had that really serious conversation about Riku and how he missed a week of school for an unattained reason. But that type of thing doesn't happen a lot. Usually we just fall asleep against one another while watching game shows and doing homework. Then her mom will shake me awake and tell me that it's late, so I should head home.

"Sora?" Her eyes concerned, thinly veiled with exhaust. "Sora, if you need a ride…" I'd smile, then like always, take my bike down to 5th and then over to Sunshine, taking a sharp left to avoid the sprinklers. Roxas, tucked away in Cloud's old room, playing video games, I'd have to make something instant and ignore my mom as she bustled about getting to work on time and how it's "all my fault" if she has a heart attack due to worry or something.

Roxas sometimes talks to me but since Kairi and I started to date, he's been distant. Or maybe I've been distant to him. Even though we share the same face, I just feel bad being around him. Guilty almost, because seeing his jaded expression is like a mirror of how bad I feel. I guess, maybe it's because he's gone now that I miss that expression. Clinging onto the false hope that he'll come home on his own, I don't even know why he left in the first place.

Mom knew that he left too, spoke to me about it, even. Snippets and clippets of conversions.

"Sora, where is your brother?"

Partially, I wanted to be an asshole and ask about Cloud. Instead I shrugged. "He's out." I'd cover for Roxas in a heartbeat if it meant that mom's tendencies were at bay. She knew I was lying and that I didn't know any more than she did.

Even though her darling baby boy is out there somewhere she's not in too much of a hurry to find him. It seemed awkward; she didn't even file a missing person's report. All she does to bring him back is peeking out through her thick curtains, looking back, forth, back again and then withdrawing to her room for the night.

Popping a vicodin and shuffling with her slippers, she'd slip her arms around my torso and hug me loosely, mumbling that he'd come back tomorrow, or the day after that. Or after that. And so on and so forth.

"To-tomorrow….goodnight Sora."

She's not well these days; I'd like to say otherwise. Actually, I'd pray and beg for otherwise. Her skin has become papery and her limbs, thin. Roxas didn't push her over the edge but he didn't help. Drowning in pills to ease the pain she takes a darveset in the mornings, aderal in the evenings followed by a vicodin. I pretend I don't notice so she doesn't get embarrassed and Kairi, when she sees the pill bottles, says nothing.

It happens these days anyway. Parents trying escape, the children are better off. Kairi, once after a heavy make-out session, tucked her head under my arm, listened to my heartbeat and said in a steady breath.

"Sora, we're all alone now." When I asked her why she merely turned her face to me more and then breathed in using my scent and the fabric softener lingering on my shirt to calm her brain. "My parents hate me." It echoed through my chest and I felt the words. Effect and sinking, it hurt worse than being punched in the nose. Something heavier and lingering.

"Kai, that's impossible, parents can't hate their kids."

"_Mine_ can."

She shuddered. We didn't talk after that, just cried a little. I held her because it felt, deep in my heart and brain and gut that the world was ending. Roxas was gone, Cloud was gone and Kairi had me. Part of me didn't want her to have any connection with me because even though for ten years we've put up with on another and for a decade she's dealt with all of the crappy relationships that I involved myself whether they were friendships or me just playing around with girls in middle school, she was there. Standing on the side-lines cheering me on, Kairi never complained about my actions.

Thinking on it, no one really complains about what I do. With the exception of my mom but while she's shoveling in capsule after chalky tablet after horse pill, she doesn't realize that I'm experimenting with drugs and kissing girls. So no one really bothers, I'm happy-go-lucky Sora and nothing more. A good time and a nice guy, fun to be around and friendly as hell. I wish people could even embrace other aspects me without thinking I've gone batshit. Or maybe became an overt homosexual. Or something.

Axel, when I first introduced myself after he sat across from Kairi on his first day of TH, called me a fag. A nice fag, but a fag nonetheless. It struck a chord in my chest and I curled my fingers around Kairi's to ignore what he said. Riku laughed at that comment, using his fork to move his salad around his plate on the other side of Kairi.

"You pegged him; Sora does nothing but suck dick all day. Ha-ah." My cheeks burned because then after he said it, Riku leaned behind Kairi to look at me and gave me this _look_ It was ridiculous and I leaned my head against Kairi's shoulder to ignore him. He was getting at it. I was ignoring it. Kairi was oblivious.

Thankfully, to break the silence afterwards, Kairi went into a full-blown introductory tourist guide to Twilight; from the origin of the name, which was obvious as hell, to the reason why the left side of the school seems to be tilting. Trivial questions and facts that Principal Tseng doubtfully knows about.

While no one was really listening for a multitude of reasons, Axel pretended to pay attention and surprised me with his ability to stay "alert" while being blabbered to about who knows what. His vibrant eyes swiveled a bit to meet mine and my ears burned, ever so slightly. Like the first time I tried to kiss Riku or when Roxas told me that sometimes, only sometimes, he wishes he didn't have to be a boy so he could feel more safe and at home with his feelings.

Just a tickle and a prick of self-loathing because my fingers tightened more around Kairi's, glad that she didn't notice the change in my disposition.

"See, and that's why the wind pressure is lower."

"So smart, this one!" Axel proclaimed dramatically, arm spreading across the table like a show, revealing the car behind door number one. "Kairi, doll, you're a genius, if I do say so myself."

Giggling at the comment, she tucked her chin beneath her palm, eyes flitting across his features and he just smirked broadly, almost as if he was making a fight out of it, me versus him. The prize: my sanity. Little did he know is that I could care less if he made Kairi cheat on me. Her stomach was already ballooning out some more and she was so ridiculously pregnant that even as she shoveled the creamed corn into her dainty mouth, I knew it.

That wasn't my fetus growing in there, it wasn't Riku and it wasn't Axel's. Hell, I doubt even Roxas could knock her up because he's too gay but just the fact that someone did, made me suspect everyone. While her lips hovered above mine I questioned her. Her fidelity was crushed and crumbled and that's why she deserves a rich man who will make her his trophy wife.

Seeing Selphie in the hall, I stopped her. The cheery brunette was the only one of Kairi's air-head friends I could tolerate in small doses. Instead of the weather, I asked her how far along Kairi was.

I wouldn't dare go to Kairi herself because it would be ridiculous, utterly and completely, because we both knew, as Selphie smile sympathetically towards me, that it wasn't my kid. Pursing her lips a bit, hiding her sympathy and rocking back on her heels she bobbled her head for a second then spoke. "Eight months, I think," she nodded, smiles still plastered across her pale skin. "She's getting really big isn't she?"

My brain swirled, I didn't know what to do. All of the doubt was being shoved and forced and I don't know why I didn't ask earlier. That happened almost a year ago, why didn't I ask earlier? Why am I still with her? Why does Riku smile at me more? Why am I-- "Is she keeping it?"

Selphie nodded glumly, clasping her hands behind her back and allowing her feet to completely touch the ground, a moment of seriousness, "Her mom is making her, a reminder of what she did." The lump in my throat was swelling.

My mind seeped into my thoughts the time when I accidentally killed Tidus's pet bird that he loved so dearly. I fed it rice; I thought it would be hungry. It wasn't my fault. I was only six, I didn't know. I cried so much. For a week, no one talked to me. Roxas just hit me with his stupid truck, knowing full well that I hated it when he did that. No one wanted to talk to me.

Trembling a little, I felt a resolve pound between my ears.

"I need to break up with her, that…" I breathed out heavily, pushing down the bad feelings. "That's not my kid."

Selphie nodded once more, her brunette curls bouncing a little as the ringlets fell over her face. "I'm sorry." And nothing else was said.

Walking to fourth block, past the nurse's office where one burly looking side-burned man sat, I knowingly passing by one of her classes. Just to see if she'll see me. To, to get her to notice me because I wasn't good enough. I could see the pink polka dots on her sundress that were almost out of season. Almost a head above her, Saïx and his vicious golden irises.

They were close and completely unaware that I was there and she hugged him tightly, the baby between them creating an awkward space. He rested his chin against her head and mumbled something, eyes not noticing me standing in the hall, smack dab, completely obvious.

A feeling of betrayal bubbled up and rested in my belly like a fetus growing and I darted in the opposite direction of my class.

If school ever taught me anything, it was to appreciate the fact that once you finish college there is no more need to stuffy classrooms and molding books. Riku and I would skip to get a taste of like that, addicting as cigarettes the freedom and vastness was calming. Riku would take me anywhere to escape so no one saw me cry. So no one saw how badly I hated them both.

As I found Riku outside of the left wing, as I clutched his chest and held him close wordlessly, as he didn't crack a joke but rather a solemn smile, his eyes lifeless. As I knew he knew before he told me, "Sora, you want to come over tonight?"

I knew it was bad news just like all of the other times.

It must have started in seventh grade, while everyone else—I guess including myself—was trying to find themselves a "girlfriend" I settled with Riku. While Kairi still stood on the sidelines, cheering me on and while Roxas was writing shit poetry, I was kissing Riku roughly and calling him a stupid girl as he sucked me off. Then we'd goof off during class and get detention together. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.

We had a complex relationship, or so I'd like to believe.

It didn't hover above the surface where Riku and I just had sex and that was that, completely okay and fine and dandy and gosh oh gee! It was more-so, Riku, being Riku and being the emotionally distraught boy that he was since 1999, was torn between liking me and liking Kairi.

Because we both could easily fit his needs of a relationship that doubled as a friendship, he chose the one with the better familiarity and gave me a hickey while we watched Kill Bill. As his hands clutched where boobs were supposed to be and groped and nibbled at my neck while not even a mile away Kairi was writing in her pink, gay, stupid little diary and most certainly confiding to it her undying love for the both of us.

I read that entry, I memorized it. It was ridiculous and while I smiled sweetly to Kairi and clutched her and then ate some instant macaroni and cheese, I internally laughed. Just as Riku insisted that I kiss him, not the other way around, I internally laughed. Manically, unceremoniously and most certainly filled with too much fervor and maliciousness for someone who was searching under Sora Standards, I cackled at my best friends and ignored that had I expressed more openly my feelings, they would have abandoned me long ago.

Like how dad rarely calls and just sends measly child support checks that don't add up for much, I don't add up to much for these two. Just a chew toy. I ignore it though and tell myself that they're just friends, nothing more.

For someone who has been beaten and broke and kicked and forced to live with the most emo teenager ever, I found myself hard to be sympathetic to Kairi, whose parents hated her and Riku who had such awkward and misplaced romances for me that the idea of anyone else made him physically lurch.

I saw it happen as I pointed out a fairly cute blonde that had an awkward haircut, he shook his head and dragged me to go buy him a greasy cheeseburger, face uneasy and hard to read.

Somewhere in my gut told me that me being best friends with Riku and kissing Riku were two different things. That if I didn't pull out, despite it being such an on/off thing for a few years now, I'd never be able to tell. That if I kissed someone else, I'd hold them to the standard to needing to be my best friend.

When Riku smuggled me out of the school and made me stand on his bike pegs, we made our way to Riku's house, considering it was the closest one. His dad wasn't home and his brother would be too busy studying to notice us.

Quietly sneaking upstairs, Riku closed his door and then held me to his chest, tightly. Because with the door closed it'd be _so_ much less effeminate and girly. I didn't complain though. The wind against my face attempted to clear my head but my brain burned. It melted and went into over drive and using his chest to muffle my sobs I let it all out. Without having to look at him, I didn't feel any regret in the fact that I was loosing it. Riku rubbed circles in my back and held me as tight as he could without hurting me. Drowning in the completeness that is the person who understands me probably the most, I bawled.

I didn't try to speak and he didn't say anything, and just held on for a really long time. Curling into me, the tears ran dry in no less than ten minutes. Kairi wasn't great and I wasn't even good enough for that. She's beautiful, yes but she has so many flaws and trivialities that made the beauty chip away. When we were kids she was snobbish but nice nonetheless so as she got older things faded completely.

She lacked good qualities past appearances. And I wasn't even good enough for that. _Saïx _of all people helped her and provided for her better than me because I wanted to dump her in the first place. My chest was tight and I needed to lie down. My head was empty.

He let go of me for a second and flipped on his radio, shuffling through his CD's, probably for something angsty so I know that it _could_ be worse. Sitting down on his bed the dropping feeling in my stomach that I wasn't good enough for her lingered.

Even though I was still upset, I'd calmed down a bit. Glancing out through his window I offhandedly noticed the car-less driveway. "Riku," a pause to sniffle and he put in a disc. "What happened to your car?"

Bubblegum electronic spurts erupted from the radio and it made me smile. Back when we first started our sexual escapades, I gave him a mix CD that we could fool around to. It seems childish and immature but I didn't want to hear him when we did it. I just wanted to focus on Gwen's voice and orgasm, nothing more nothing less. Gwen and orgasm. Gwen has a pretty face and nice boobs and a pleasant voice, Riku looked like a girl.

"It's in the shop getting a paint job. Courtesy of Kadaj, it's an early birthday present for me." He looks like a girl. He's so skinny and wears too many band T-shirts.

"Oh yeah, that's coming up."

Riku only smiled and plopped down beside me, the afghan that his mother who is traveling these days, sent up from Mexico. Taking my hand, my heartbeat hammered in my chest. I was sure Riku could hear it and even though I wasn't nervous or anything, I just felt worried.

Gwen's voice crooned electronically being accompanied by giggling Asians. Lips cupping the shell of my ear, I could feel him smiling.

"You'll get me something won't you?" Biting my lip, his breath gave me goosebumps that trailed down my spinal cord through each segment and vertebrae and the butterflies in my stomach that I hadn't felt since I asked Kairi out fluttered and flapped their wings. Each beat, a tear at my stomach.

Nervously standing up, I wiped my hands against my jeans, the sweat building up causing a notification. "Let's play Xbox." Smiling forcibly, Riku didn't mention my obvious avoidance of his inclinations.

Flipping some of his hair from his face, he grinned broadly. "It's not like it matters, I'll beat you no matter what."

Laughing pretentiously, I jutted my finger at him. "Bring it on!"

He did, I lost.

I left Riku's house on a happy note, mom didn't mind that I was home late and probably didn't even notice. She just stared out the window for a second batting away the strands of hair that fell out of her bun. She smelled a bit like whiskey and cough syrup and I was getting extremely worried because things were just not turning up. In the back of my mind I guessed her weight and wondered if she had gardened lately.

Then I ignored her entirely and my cell phone that was buzzing from Kairi and my homework that was probably a deciding factor of me failing or no but instead of worrying about anything I took a bath. Now say, if Roxas were here, home and in my vicinity and I took a bath he'd go on and _on_ about how gay it was for dudes to take baths.

But there is something relaxing being submerged and trying to block out everything. Not that anything exciting ever happened at home. Mom occasionally brought home friends from work that she said she was 'just friends' with and I don't even know. While she had the possibility of ruining my life, I just find myself not caring much these days. So she's neglectful? A lot of people are.

Submerged in water, I tried to forget the flaws.

(x)

My first multi-chaptered fic! I'm super excited! Expect the next chapter soon, please. c:


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